Buddhist and Shia Identity in Ladakh

Prospects for Global English: Back to BASIC? David Simpson (bio) We have lived, at least since the 18th century, with an immense respect for the power of language, a conviction about its centrality to mind and society that runs more or less unbroken from Herder and Fichte to Derrida and beyond. The origins of our exemplary arguments for the power of language—we might call it the “strong determination” theory, according to which what we speak makes us what we are and perhaps makes the world we see—lie in the efforts at state formation and in the consolidating nationalisms of the 18th and 19th centuries, or perhaps even earlier. When Fichte spoke of the beauties of German, he had in mind a group of speakers yet to become a nation. Concerns about a national language in the United States after 1776 had a related emphasis—on the question of how a common language might or might not consolidate a new nation into a working society, one balancing common customs and laws with the diversity and flexibility deemed appropriate to a liberal-democratic ethic, all of this complicated by the fact that the language—English—was already spoken elsewhere and by a different nation and culture. 1 Marshall McLuhan told us, with some conviction, that fixing the language had been an essential prerequisite for fixing a nation: “there cannot be nationalism when there has not first been an experience of a vernacular in printed form. . . nationalism depends upon or derives from the ‘fixed point of view’ that arrives with print, perspective, and visual quantification.” 2 Now we are supposed to be in a postnational, along with a postmodern era. And if postmodernism really is, as Stuart Hall says somewhere, a word for describing “how the world dreams itself to be ‘American,’” 3 then what is the language in which the world is dreaming? An international national language? Who controls it, forms it, adds to it and subtracts from it? Who is resisting it, and why? (We know that the French, and Prince Charles, are resisting it.) 4 And how is it circulated? Should someone try to conceive and impose a global English, or is it best left to the vagaries of the global market and the unpredictable circulation of culture? We know about the longstanding resistance to planning and controlling in the British and American traditions. John Adams said that he wanted an academy, prompted perhaps by the optimism about social planning that was current after the French Revolution, and the argument has reappeared from time to time. But most British and American commentators have taken the line set forth by Samuel Johnson, that this kind of attempted control is first, empirically hopeless and second, metaphysically hostile to the spirit of liberty and laisser-faire that governs the two homelands of the English language. We Britons and Americans have trembled before our [End Page 301] schoolteachers with their canons of correct usage, but we tell ourselves that we will never bow before a government agency, or even an MLA commission. The development of English—British and American—has then been apparently unplanned—which means, of course, that it has been policed locally and variably rather than by a grand vision of a single design. In the 18th century, Johnson, Sheridan, Bailey and their kind fought over the definition of proper English, and over the right to market it in the form of dictionaries, grammars, and manuals of pronunciation. Something similar happened in America with the competitive grammars of Webster and Murray and others, and in the famous “dictionary wars” between Noah Webster and Joseph Emerson Worcester. What forces are playing upon and within global English? What kinds of languages compose global English, given that there is no one standard in current use? I won’t try to answer this empirically. I’ll just mention the hodge podge of British Council English, International Business English, American media English, and local conventions generated in the anglophone former colonies and now spoken by millions in India, South Africa, Australasia and so on. Cambridge University Press has tried to hit the spot with the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995), its 100,000 entries...

Primeval rainforest at the Equator on the west coast of Africa, the land we know as Gabon, was settled prehistorically by Pygmies during the late Stone Age, and then by Bantu-speaking migrants during the Iron Age. These culturally diverse peoples did not develop a common language or political system with one another until after their violent conquest by Europeans during the colonial era. The Age of Discovery in the 15th century brought European explorers to the coast. The Atlantic triangle trade, with its slave barracoons and entrepôts, transformed some African communities along the coast into centralized kingdoms, and turned other clan-based societies of the forested interior into hunted peoples suspicious of any and all outsiders, European or African. The Scramble for Africa brought military expeditions into Gabon in the 19th century, when French colonial rule was established. Colonialism bestowed on the ethnic groups of Gabon a protonational identity of being “Gabonese,” although this nationalist impulse was muted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the effort of French authorities and missionaries to assimilate black Africans into France’s culture and civilization. Unassimilated colonial subjects in the interior of the newly conquered territory violently resisted French colonial rule until the world wars, by which time the assimilation project had sufficiently fashioned a new coastal French-educated Gabonese elite. The two world wars weakened France and led these assimilated elites to a call for political reforms, at first taking the form of mono-ethnic-based political parties, but eventually coalescing around multiethnic coalitions, largely francophone in outlook, while retaining many elements of older precolonial identities. Independence in 1960 brought to power three authoritarian rulers—Léon Mba, Omar Bongo, and Ali Bongo—as well as consolidation of an oil-rentier state and an oxymoronic dynastic republic. “Gabonese” national identity emerged, an imagined community constructed out of African music, literature, and art, yet incorporating French as its lingua franca.

This essay examines three different points of cultural contact between Muslims and Christians in medieval Iberia as documented in three different bodies of texts. In each example, the use of alingua francaresults in the exchange of cultural ideas and the re-presentation of one group in the language of another. The first point of contact is in the court of Córdoba in the early 9th century as recorded in an Arabic biography of a musician, which has survived only as excerpted in a later encyclopedia compiled across the Mediterranean in Syria in the 14th century. The second point of contact takes place only a few decades later, also in Córdoba, and is documented in a Latin epistle composed by a Christian during a period of increasing tension between Muslims and Christians. The third point of contact occurs in Aragon and Catalonia in the late 14th and early 15th century, where ‘Moorish’ and Jewish musicians and dancers were regularly hired to perform at the courts of the royal family and other nobles, the evidence for which is found in financial records composed in Old Catalan. Each of these examples provides evidence of cultural contact that could significantly change our understanding of the relationship between cultural and linguistic groups in this period.

Introduction The decline of marriage in the West has been extensively researched over the last three decades (Carmichael and Whittaker; de Vaus; Coontz; Beck-Gernshein). Indeed, it was fears that the institution would be further eroded by the legalisation of same sex unions internationally that provided the impetus for the Australian government to amend the Marriage Act (1961). These amendments in 2004 sought to strengthen marriage by explicitly defining, for the first time, marriage as a legal partnership between one man and one woman. The subsequent heated debates over the discriminatory nature of this definition have been illuminating, particularly in the way they have highlighted the ongoing social significance of marriage, even at a time it is seen to be in decline. Demographic research about partnering practices (Carmichael and Whittaker; Simons; Parker; Penman) indicates that contemporary marriages are more temporary, fragile and uncertain than in previous generations. Modern marriages are now less about a permanent and “inescapable” union between a dominant man and a submissive female for the purposes of authorised sex, legal progeny and financial security, and more about a commitment between two social equals for the mutual exchange of affection and companionship (Croome). Less research is available, however, about how couples themselves reconcile the inherited constructions of romantic love as selfless and unending, with trends that clearly indicate that romantic love is not forever, ideal or exclusive. Civil marriage ceremonies provide one source of data about representations of love. Civil unions constituted almost 70 per cent of all marriages in Australia in 2010, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The civil marriage ceremony has both a legal and symbolic role. It is a legal contract insofar as it prescribes a legal arrangement with certain rights and responsibilities between two consenting adults and outlines an expectation that marriage is voluntarily entered into for life. The ceremony is also a public ritual that requires couples to take what are usually private feelings for each other and turn them into a public performance as a way of legitimating their relationship. Consistent with the conventions of performance, couples generally customise the rest of the ceremony by telling the story of their courtship, and in so doing they often draw upon the language and imagery of the Western Romantic tradition to convey the personal meaning and social significance of their decision. This paper explores how couples construct the idea of love in their relationship, first by examining the western history of romantic love and then by looking at how this discourse is invoked by Australians in the course of developing civil marriage ceremonies in collaboration with the author. A History of Romantic Love There are many definitions of romantic love, but all share similar elements including an intense emotional and physical attraction, an idealisation of each other, and a desire for an enduring and unending commitment that can overcome all obstacles (Gottschall and Nordlund; Janowiak and Fischer). Romantic love has historically been associated with heightened passions and intense almost irrational or adolescent feelings. Charles Lindholm’s list of clichés that accompany the idea of romantic love include: “love is blind, love overwhelms, a life without love is not worth living, marriage should be for love alone and anything less is worthless and a sham” (5). These elements, which invoke love as sacred, unending and unique, perpetuate past cultural associations of the term. Romantic love was first documented in Ancient Rome where intense feelings were seen as highly suspect and a threat to the stability of the family, which was the primary economic, social and political unit. Roman historian Plutarch viewed romantic love based upon strong personal attraction as disruptive to the family, and he expressed a fear that romantic love would become the norm for Romans (Lantz 352). During the Middle Ages romantic love emerged as courtly love and, once again, the conventions that shaped its expression grew out of an effort to control excessive emotions and sublimate sexual desire, which were seen as threats to social stability. Courtly love, according to Marilyn Yalom, was seen as an “irresistible and inexhaustible passion; a fatal love that overcomes suffering and even death” (66). Feudal social structures had grounded marriage in property, while the Catholic Church had declared marriage a sacrament and a ceremony through which God’s grace could be obtained. In this context courtly love emerged as a way of dealing with the conflict between the individual and family choices over the martial partner. Courtly love is about a pure ideal of love in which the knight serves his unattainable lady, and, by carrying out feats in her honour, reaches spiritual perfection. The focus on the aesthetic ideal was a way to fulfil male and female emotional needs outside of marriage, while avoiding adultery. Romantic love re-appeared again in the mid-eighteenth century, but this time it was associated with marriage. Intellectuals and writers led the trend normalising romantic love in marriage as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s valorisation of reason, science and materialism over emotion. Romantics objected to the pragmatism and functionality induced by industrialisation, which they felt destroyed the idea of the mysterious and transcendental nature of love, which could operate as a form of secular salvation. Love could not be bought or sold, argued the Romantics, “it is mysterious, true and deep, spontaneous and compelling” (Lindholm 5). Romantic love also emerged as an expression of the personal autonomy and individualisation that accompanied the rise of industrial society. As Lanz suggests, romantic love was part of the critical reflexivity of the Enlightenment and a growing belief that individuals could find self actualisation through the expression and expansion of their “emotional and intellectual capacities in union with another” (354). Thus it was romantic love, which privileges the feelings and wishes of an individual in mate selection, that came to be seen as a bid for freedom by the offspring of the growing middle classes coerced into marriage for financial or property reasons. Throughout the 19th century romantic love was seen as a solution to the dehumanising forces of industrialisation and urbanisation. The growth of the competitive workplace—which required men to operate in a restrained and rational manner—saw an increase in the search for emotional support and intimacy within the domestic domain. It has been argued that “love was the central preoccupation of middle class men from the 1830s until the end of the 19th century” (Stearns and Knapp 771). However, the idealisation of the aesthetic and purity of love impacted marriage relations by casting the wife as pure and marital sex as a duty. As a result, husbands pursued sexual and romantic relationships outside marriage. It should be noted that even though love became cemented as the basis for marriage in the 19th century, romantic love was still viewed suspiciously by religious groups who saw strong affection between couples as an erosion of the fundamental role of the husband in disciplining his wife. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries romantic love was further impacted by urbanisation and migration, which undermined the emotional support provided by extended families. According to Stephanie Coontz, it was the growing independence and mobility of couples that saw romantic love in marriage consolidated as the place in which an individual’s emotional and social needs could be fully satisfied. Coontz says that the idea that women could only be fulfilled through marriage, and that men needed women to organise their social life, reached its heights in the 1950s (25-30). Changes occurred to the structure of marriage in the 1960s when control over fertility meant that sex was available outside of marriage. Education, equality and feminism also saw women reject marriage as their only option for fulfilment. Changes to Family Law Acts in western jurisdictions in the 1970s provided for no-fault divorce, and as divorce lost its stigma it became acceptable for women to leave failing marriages. These social shifts removed institutional controls on marriage and uncoupled the original sexual, emotional and financial benefits packaged into marriage. The resulting individualisation of personal lifestyle choices for men and women disrupted romantic conventions, and according to James Dowd romantic love came to be seen as an “investment” in the “future” that must be “approached carefully and rationally” (552). It therefore became increasingly difficult to sustain the idea of love as a powerful, mysterious and divine force beyond reason. Methodology In seeking to understand how contemporary partnering practices are reconstituting romantic love, I draw upon anecdotal data gathered over a nine-year period from my experiences as a marriage celebrant. In the course of personalising marriage ceremonies, I pose a series of questions designed to assist couples to explain the significance of their relationship. I generally ask brides and grooms why they love their fiancé, why they want to legalise their relationship, what they most treasure about their partner, and how their lives have been changed by their relationship. These questions help couples to reflexively interrogate their own relationship, and by talking about their commitment in concrete terms, they produce the images and descriptions that can be used to describe for guests the internal motivations and sentiments that have led to their decision to marry. I have had couples, when prompted to explain how they know the other person loves them say, in effect: “I know that he loves me because he bri

The Italian scholar and political leader Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an active opponent of the dictatorial government ruling his country before the 2nd World War. He was kept in prison for11 years, until his death, by the ruling Fascist Party and during that time he filled over 3,000 pages, writing about Linguistics, History and Philosophy. He was concerned with the duty of Italian progressive intellectuals to create a ‘common literary language’, accessible to the under-privileged Italian people, who until then had been excluded from culture. After the war, during the sixties of last century, a ‘common Italian language’ started developing, through the introduction of the 10-years long compulsory school and the increasing power of mass media: that language was not fit to become the common literary language of the Nation. The writer and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), who in his novels gave voice to the sub-urban proletarians of the city of Rome, was highly unsatisfied with the new common language that was in the process of being established in the country. As for China, when the imperial system was abolished by the ‘Xinhai revolution’, in 1911, the belief became increasingly widespread among intellectuals that the rebirth of China had to be based in the global rejection of the Confucian tradition and that the ‘Báihuà’ (people’s language) should be adopted in literature, replacing the ‘Wényán’ (classical language), not accessible to the common people. Lu Xun and his colleagues eventually succeeded in their efforts of establishing the ‘Báihuà’ as the common literary language of China. Purpose of the paper is the comparison between the efforts exerted by these literati in creating a ‘common literary language’ in their respective countries.

This paper examines the changing geography of written scripts for the shrine of Na Tuk Kong, a popular deity in Malaysia, from Hokkien, or Lan-lang-oe, to Mandarin. The written scripts used on the deity tablets of Na Tuk Kong usually show an inclination toward colloquial expressions from the Hokkien language, and have been shown to be a well-illustrated example of an ethnic marker that can be used to distinguish Hokkien speakers from other immigrants from China, such as the Hakka and Cantonese immigrants and their descendants, in the Malay Peninsula. The pan-Chinese nationalist movement since the 20th century has led the Hokkien speakers to adopt Mandarin as their lingua franca but Hokkien expressions, especially in Romanized spelling, have persisted in some areas such as on commercial signboards, while Hokkien linguistic expressions in the aforementioned religious field have also been retained. Nevertheless, the acceptance of the mass manufactured deity tablet and other appurtenances in the recent decades have demonstrated a tendency of the written scripts for the Na Tuk Kong shrine to move from Hokkien to Mandarin among Hokkien speakers. By examining the written scripts on sign boards, banners, tablets, and couplets of the Na Tuk Kong shrine in the Hokkien dominated area of Northern Malaysia, the study reveals the changing geography of the Na Tuk Kong shrine from Hokkien to Mandarin in the urban commercial and newly-developed suburban districts, while at the same time, signage with a stronger indicator of Hokkien ethnic markers tend to be either larger in size or related to the temples nearby, a characteristic of a longer history of development and more followers.

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This book provides a historical survey of the unfolding of translation and interpreting (language mediation) in the 20th century with special reference to the German-speaking area. It is based first, on extensive archive research in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, second, on a large number of interviews with experts in the field of language mediation, and third, on the author's observations and experiences in the field of translation practice, translation teaching, and translation studies between 1950-1995. A specific feature of the book is the description of the social role of the language mediator through the prisms of communicative targets and technological developments and to determine his function as that of an indispensable bridge-builder between the members of differing linguistic and cultural communities. Historically, it distinguishes between three main phases, the period from 1900 to 1919 with the dominance of French as lingua franca in international communication, the period from 1919 to 1945, which is characterized by English-French bilingualism, and the period from 1945 to approximately 1990 with its massive trend toward multilingualism and the development of language mediation into a “translation industry”. The book continues with chapters on the implications of globalization, specialization and automaticization for international communication and it closes with reflections on future prospects for the profession in a knowledge society, both from a practical and a pedagogical viewpoint.

Malay philosophies of education refer to the educational thoughts of Malay philosophers from the period of the Islamization of the Malay world in the 13th century up to the present. Malay refers to an ethnic group with the Malay language as the major language of communication. The Malay world refers to the region in Southeast Asia comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand, pockets of Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), and the southern Philippines. Prior to the introduction of Islam to the region in the 13th century, the Malay people were influenced by Hinduism, and some remnants of Hindu practices such as the conduct of the wedding ceremony and yellow being the color of royalty are still visible today. Islamization revolutionized the Malay worldview with a new ontology, cosmology, and monotheism. Moreover, the Malay language was elevated as a scientific and literary language and became a lingua franca that was widely used for communication, while Jawi script (Arabic) was used in writing, such that the region became known as the Malay world. Malay philosophies of education are very intricately related to Islamic philosophy or the Islamic worldview. Hamka, a 20th century Indonesian scholar, states that his Malayness is totally integrated with Islamic elements. Thus, the Malays’ understanding of Islam determines the goals of education. Historically, the goals of Malay education developed from the focus on the hereafter and sufism due to the nature of Islam received by the Malays at this particular time. Al-Ghazali, al-Shafie, and al-Ash’ari were among the scholars who exerted great influence on Malay scholarship. The philosophy of Malay education changed as a result of colonization by Western powers that established schools offering a liberal, secular education. However, contact with Muslim reformers in Egypt, specifically Muhammad Abduh, led to the reform of Islamic traditional schools. Hence, there was a shift in focus to reason, philosophy, and science with a closer reading of the Qur’an and Sunnah, and the goals of education emphasized the study of the acquired sciences and the use of reason. As a consequence, there were many efforts to change the existing educational institutions in terms of their curriculum. Finally, after independence, attempts were made to integrate the dualistic educational system—liberal, secular public school and traditional, religious schools—through an educational philosophy and curriculum that is holistic, integrated, and balanced, but that is also faith-based. It is not adequate to have both the acquired and revealed sciences merely coexisting but compartmentalized in the curriculum, for their values may still be conflicting. Thus, the concept of the Islamization of contemporary knowledge was deliberated and subsequently attempted. This is the climax of the unity of knowledge that is enshrined in the Islamic worldview. The educational landscape in the Malay world has been shaped by the thought patterns of Muslim scholars and the Islamic worldview.

In 2020 the Imposters by prominent Arab author al-Hariri (1054-1122) was issued by the NYU press. The masterpiece of Arabic Literature has alrea­dy been translated into several languages, but Michael Cooperson presented absolutely different version. In the paper I try to analyze the attitude of the translators to the origi­nal text in a diachrony. How Maqamat of al-Hariri were perceived in diffe­rent cultures? What was / is the priority while translating them? What has been changed from the Middle Ages to the globalization era? Persian, Hebrew, German and Russian translations of the Maqamat are imitations, while Latin, French and previous English translations basically were paraphrase / metaphrase. As al-Hariri’s language is too complicated, Per­sian and Jewish translators in the 12th –13th centuries tried to prove that their languages were not of less importance than the holy language and the lingua franca of that time. As for European translations, Orientalistic attitude to the Arabic piece of literature meant to use it for the own interests. Imitations of the Maqamat were used for enrichment of receiving cultures, exact trans­lations – to teach Arabic or to make some linguistic researches. All of them were domestications. In post-orientlist times Cooperson first tried to preserve the soul of the origin. In his translation, which is more transculturation, one can see his great respect to the Arabic culture. But for the American translator the most important thing in the Maqamat is the linguistical firework in it. Cooperson doesn’t see original text as a fictional work with its irony and critic of the Arab society. He doesn’t assess it as a “pre-novelistic” literary piece. He doesn’t notice its fictional hero’s inner duality. He translates only the form. As a result, in the newest translation the possibilities of the modern global English are well represented, while important features of the origin are lost. Al-Hariri was not a great poet, nor a great improvisor, but his Maqa­mat, as a celebration of the language and style, became the text, which has been translated to demonstrate the possibilities of different languages. In the post-orientalist epoch, it’s the celebration of contemporary lingua franca.

It is often said that languages for specific purposes (also named special languages or technolects) are the product of a division of labor. Although this concept was introduced only as late as 1776 (by Adam Smith, in An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations), the idea that professions or occupations of all kind are characterized by a particular vocabulary that is not understood by all native speakers was already manifest in the writings of medieval scholars (for instance, in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia). In the Middle Ages most Romance languages conquered a more or less wide range of domains. The question arose whether they were also appropriate to serve as a medium of scholarship. The disciplines taught at the universities (arts, theology, law, medicine) had a strong Latin tradition; their knowledge was popularized by means of translations, which enriched the vocabulary and the syntactic flexibility of the emerging languages. Thus, the translators—sometimes organized in “schools”—contributed to the elaboration of the target languages and to their emancipation from Latin. Aside from the septem artes liberales, however, a second group of (seven) disciplines without Latin roots (called artes mechanicae) established and introduced mainly native vocabulary typical of the respective occupational fields. During the first centuries of modern times, more and more scholars felt that their mother tongue should take the place of Latin as a means of propagating scholarship and new findings. In the 17th and 18th centuries, French held the lead among the modern languages in nearly all fields of knowledge; it maintained its dominant position among the Romance languages until the second half of the 20th century. On a global level, German was a strong rival in the humanities and several scientific disciplines in the 19th century; for many decades, however, English has been the universal medium of communication in the scientific community. This process has given rise to many discussions about language planning measures to be taken in order to curtail the Anglo-American supremacy. Before the 18th century, special languages did not have a strong impact on the physiognomy of developed languages. In the sphere of academic disciplines, translations of canonical Latin texts entailed a general re-Latinization and, as a consequence, a process of convergence of the Romance languages. The technical languages of trade and artisanry were highly fragmented so that their special vocabulary was used and understood only in limited geographical areas. In the Age of Enlightenment, the growing prestige of experts, on the one hand, and philosophical considerations about the optimization of language(s), on the other hand, led to increasing harmonization efforts on national and supranational levels. Organizations were founded with the purpose of creating and standardizing terminologies for various kinds of subjects (technical products, medicine, etc.). Special languages, far from being homogeneous varieties, are differentiated vertically. Linguists use to distinguish between three levels of communication: specialists inter se (e.g., physician—physician), specialist—skilled worker (physician—nurse), and specialist—layman (physician—patient). Studying how technical terms seep into common language and what changes they undergo during this process is a great challenge for linguists.

Basque fishermen were among the most numerous visitors of the North East coast of America in the 16th and 17th centuries. They traded actively with some of the native tribes on the coast and along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. During these contacts, a trade language, a pidgin developed, which was based on Basque and Amerindian languages which was used by both Amerindians and Europeans. Contemporary British, French and Basque sources (mostly from the first decades of the 17th century) are cited which point to the existence and the importance of this Basque pidgin. Not many traces are left, however. Only a few sentences have been recorded. Altogether about thirty Basque words are identified from these older sources, all used by Amerindians of Canada's east coast. A few Basque words from this pidgin survive in modern Canadian French and in Micmac, one of theAmerican Indian languages of the Basque trading area. This pidgin must have been in fairly wide use for about one century before it died out. Historical information about the trade contacts is also given, as well as some ethnographic information about the tribes the Basques had contacts with. The Basque words from the early 17th century are also of some importance for Basque philology, as they constitute some of the oldest printed specimens of the Basque language.

Lingua Franca

A close examination of the commonplace formulae, of the 'lingua franca' of our musical heritage has become an absolute necessity in modern musicology; this axiom has been stated by the 'great old man' of Hungarian musicology Bence Szabolcsi, in one of his latest, authoritative essays.1 We think it to be by no means purely accidental that the highly imaginative argumentation of Szabolcsi's has often been exemplified by examples taken from the oeuvre of Joseph Haydn. When Szabolcsi pursues his argument (op. cit. p. 13) this way Within a community, for the average listener's pleasure in music that general notion has been a decisive factor 'I always know where I am and in what direction I am going', this typical instance of 18th century esthetics (i.e. the idea of easily recognizable forms and formulae) notoriously has been exemplified by a famous saying of the 18th century lexicographer E. L. Gerber (one of J. Haydn's first biographers) who in 1790 wrote these famous words: His [Haydn's] music disposes of the great art to evoke the illusion of being surprisingly familiar and easily recognizable.2 In order to be easily recognizable, these familiar formulae have to appear at the most obvious points of the composition, that is: preferably in the initial and in the cadential Here again, we agree with Szabolcsi's supplementary statement (op. cit. p. 24): The typical music of the 18th century (including that of Haydn 'and Mozart) consists for the most part of typified initial and cadential formulae.

The theoretical basis for the approach used in this article is T. Kuhn’s version of social constructivism, according to which the subject of science is formed due to the languages of science. For the first time in Russian history of science, С. Bazerman’s approach was applied here, allowing us to reveal a set of scientific practices and languages of description that were used in the 18th century: a standardized description of facts in the common language of the scientific community; publication of the results in scientific journals, dictionaries and encyclopaedias; participation in scientific expeditions and educational trips; scientific correspondence. The authors of this article claim that the scientific practices and languages of description used by the Russian scientific communities in the 18th century were similar to those adopted by the scientific communities in Europe. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the use of these languages and practices allowed the amateur scientist (V.N. Tatishchev) to obtain significant scientific results. To do this, we identify the scientific practices and languages of description approved by the scientific community in 18th-century Russia and compare them to Tatishchev’s nonprofessional scientific and historical work. We conclude that turning to the accepted scientific practices, such as scientific expeditions, hypothetico-deductive method, and stepwise organization of research, allowed Tatishchev to arrive at important conclusions in palaeontology and geography. However, in spite of his work with historical sources (chronicles) and attempts to standardize the language of describing historical facts (his Lexicon), Tatishchev’s historical research lacks indisputable results, which fact we attribute to his insufficient knowledge of Latin – the language used by the scientific community of the 18th century to describe facts – and to his use of the methodology rejected by historians.